


for a moment there i thought we were in trouble

by indigostohelit



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Western, Bandits & Outlaws, Desert, M/M, Newspapers, Tall Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-06
Updated: 2013-12-06
Packaged: 2018-01-03 16:39:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1072760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>But all the papers from here to New York can damn well take notice: Ray was born when the thunder was raging and crashin', came out of his mama with the Devil at his heels, and took off running straight to Texas buck naked and covered in blood. (Well, says Brad, that may've been the first time he found himself in that situation, but it sure as hell weren't the last.)</p><p>Or: "Gentlemen, from now on we're going to have to earn our stories."</p>
            </blockquote>





	for a moment there i thought we were in trouble

Any good outlaw, Ray says, was probably born in a lightning storm.

Brad ain't too sure of that—or from the way he smirks at Ray, rolls those horizon-blue eyes at him, Ray thinks he ain't too sure of it. But all the papers from here to New York can damn well take notice: Ray was born when the thunder was raging and crashin', came out of his mama with the Devil at his heels, and took off running straight to Texas buck naked and covered in blood. (Well, says Brad, that may've been the first time he found himself in that situation, but it sure as hell weren't the last.)

Motherfucker, Ray's wrestled bears. Ray's ridden thunderbirds. Ray's outrun jackrabbits, Ray's outfoxed coyotes, Ray once lassoed a snake so tight that everywhere his rope touched turned bright red—and, guess the fuck what, assholes, that's how the Mountain Kingsnake got his stripes.

Silver stars on his heels, hat tipped low over his forehead, skin burnt the color of the goddamn sun; yeah, motherfuckers, Ray Person's here to stay.

     

And if Ray'd like to say he came out of his mama with the Devil already chasin' him, well, there's some'll say the Devil rides beside him these days. More'll say the Devil always was.

Nobody knows where Brad comes from; only Ray knows that even Brad ain't too sure himself. Only he's got hair the color of the dead-cracked ground, all wasted and gold, and eyes as pale and empty as that goddamn sky, and so maybe he came out of the good earth itself, like a mole; Ray's voiced this thought to Brad more than once, and gotten a smack for his troubles.

Ain't nobody faster with a gun. Nobody in a hundred thousand miles.

Which, point of fact, might be how they meet; it's possible Ray's drunk off his ass, too much of a mess even to make a pass at Josie Bassett, who's been smiling at him like he's a hundred dollars all night; it's possible that he staggers out of the saloon, flops down hard and heavy on his back in the dust, stares up into the wide and starry Western night.

It's possible that out of nowhere-at-all, somebody tells him, You ain't lookin' too good, friend.

Ray grins wild and upside-down into the face of the man standing above him. You ain't lookin' too hot yourself, stranger, he says.

I ain't half-passed out in the gutter, says the stranger, and Ray'll be damned if this man ain't the prettiest thing in this whole territory, even with a cut lip and something nasty on his temple that looks like it'll scar.

He blinks up at the man, asks him, You insultin' my integrity?

Ain't that an expensive word for a man smellin' like cheap whiskey? says the stranger. His face is blurring before Ray's eyes.

That, Ray informs him, waggling a finger in his general direction, _was_ insultin' my integrity. And my honor. And whatever the fuck ancestors I got left. Pistols at high noon.

At which point he passes out.

When he wakes up, his head's pounding like a brass band; he struggles to sit up, blinks the sun out of his eyes, groans, and rolls into the shade of the overhang of Josie's saloon.

You tryin' to hide? says a voice, drawling and amused.

Ray glances up; it's the stranger from last night, because there ain't no God, and if there is, he hates Ray Person personally and in particular.

I ain't no coward, he tells the man, and rolls valiantly back into the sun, squints at the shine of the man's boots wavering in his gaze, and carefully spits in front of them.

Neither 'm I, says the man's voice, amused, and a hand appears in front of Ray's eyes. He blinks at it blearily for a few seconds before grabbing it; the stranger lifts him to his feet, and Ray pats at his gun belt for a panicked second, he's been passed out here since—yeah, she's still there. All right. He ain't fucked.

Ain't it noon yet, stranger? he says. Y'scared to stand in front of me without holdin' my hand?

It's half past one, says the stranger. Thought y'might've forgotten, or skipped town. Wouldn't be the first time a man saw me and ran.

Motherfucker, says Ray, with as much dignity as his hangover can muster, last time _I_ threatened to draw on some out-of-town big-for-his-boots SOB, he ran outta town so fast that the dust cloud he raised turned into a storm cloud like nothin' you ever saw. And lemme tell you, that storm rained for days and days, and everything flooded, rainwater in the towns, rainwater out on the roads, and when the floodwaters subsided, well, there was a Lake Michigan where there weren't no Lake Michigan before.

The man stares at him for a long second—then his face splits in a smile like nothing Ray's ever seen before, not in his life. You ain't bad at tellin' tales, he says, for a drunk-ass mess who can't even find his ass a razor to shave with.

For a smug overgrown stranger who ain't even walked out to face me proper on the road down there, says Ray, you ain't bad at payin' compliments.

Yeah? says the stranger, the smile still slow and easy on his face. You ain't moved your feet neither.

Five minutes later, he shoots the gun out of Ray's hand.

      

There's some what'll say the desert spreads out, big and sprawling and lazy around them. Ray knows better; Ray knows the desert _runs._

Runs like a coyote, thin-faced and with its ribs showing so strong you could play piano on 'em. Runs like a jackrabbit, all the hounds of hell behind it. Runs like a rattlesnake, quick and deadly and prettier 'n' anything your sorry ass ever saw.

The desert runs, and the sky rolls out in every direction like a girl's hair ribbon, bluer than blue and sharper than a knife, not a cloud for miles around, and the sagebrush curlin' on the horizon all tight and new in the early morning. The desert runs, and the railroads are windin' West carefully from the smoke-thick cities of the eastern coasts, and the rabbits and snakes and coyotes are all runnin' quick as they can up ahead of them, like a hunter and his prey. The desert runs, and though the sky's clearer than good water, Brad says he smells storm.

The desert runs, and Ray, he ain't never been one to back down from a race.

         

All the travelers rushin' out to California; they say the sun sets over there, pours all its light into a great big basin, turns the water into gold. Ray'll believe it. Ain't a horizon if there ain't promises attached; ain't a horizon if there ain't lies.

Brad presses the barrel of his gun to the pinched-ass forehead of a lemon-faced woman with a bustle that goes half out the door of the stagecoach, says, Ma'am, I hate to be an advocate of a cliché, but it really would be preferable if you handed over that nice sack on the top of the wagon.

He means your money or your life, says Ray, who's grinning all sharp-toothed at the stage driver. If it ain't too much trouble, sweetheart.

They count out the cash, later, in a little hideout at the very edge of a canyon; it's a cabin Brad built— _with his own two hands_ , Ray'll learn to chorus—and the walls are leaning in and the wood's all warped and the roof's a piece of shit and the next time the storms come and wash this world clean the whole damn thing'll fall in on 'em, and Ray Person, well, he don't care.

There's gold piled on the table when Brad throws Ray down on the rickety-ass bed, gold in the sunlight streaking through the windows when Brad pushes Ray's hands above his head and squeezes at his wrists so hard Ray can't move a muscle, gold in Brad's hair as he kisses down Ray's neck, bites all careless at his collarbone. There's blue under his eyelashes when he glances up at Ray from through his lashes, blue in the bruises he leaves on Ray's arms when he presses them into the cot, and blue, blue, blue in the burning sky outside.

Brad sleeps, after, loose-limbed and dozing with the sheets tossed around his waist. He's like an enormous cat there, one of the spotted ones with the curling tails that go wanderin' around the mining towns of California: gorgeous as the sun and dangerous as hell.

Ray sits in the rickety chair at the other end of the room, cleans his gun, lets himself sneak glances at Brad through his eyelashes. The cabin smells like pine and wood smoke. When Brad stirs and rolls out of bed, pads over to the door still dressed only in his bedsheets, Ray doesn't glance up to kiss him. There ain't no place for tenderness here.

Outside, there's the sound of splashing water from the stream that curls around the back of Brad's cabin, runs on and on until it reaches the canyon's end; Brad comes back in with his face dripping and his eyes on fire.

For that, Ray'll look up at him. What the fuck bright idea you got now, he says, come on, Iceman, y'better keep me entertained if you want to have me as your kept woman, I'm so damn _bored—_

         

Newspapers smell like railroads and dust, says Brad. Smell like something imported from the East, all flash and no meat, and half of what they print they don't know, and half of what they do know they got wrong.

Ray says Brad's jealous 'cause he ain't got a pretty picture of himself plastered from here to Massachusetts. Ain't no fun for Brad, he points out, if he ain't getting all the attention.

The railroads rush west, and the farms are spreadin' out, and the trains rattle on, on, on, towards the golden cities by the sea. Brad's a ghost, a shadow, a silhouette framed by the setting sun; Brad's in motion, and Ray presses his spurs against his horse's side, follows him towards that dyin' light.

       

They rob trains.

It makes sense, says Brad; it's natural, says Brad; it's the next logical step, says Brad. The railroad companies ain't gonna put that cash anywhere but their own pockets, says Brad, and Ray says, neither are we. Brad looks at him, tilts his head. Ray says, gimme that gun.

Y'can't rob trains with only two. They gather a gang: some of Brad's old friends, some of Ray's, some hangers-on who heard about 'em in the papers. (The damn papers; there's a Chicago newspaperman who's callin' them Robin Hoods and tellin' the whole nation _We say Bravo to these Fine Gentlemen_ , there's _cartoons_ , Brad says he can't be having with it.)

There's a fair-haired boy who looks like an eager puppy and smiles like sunshine; there's a half-Indian with a Bear Flag in his satchel and a mouth on him like a sailor; there's a kid who always carries around a damn camera, enough that Brad smacks it hard, asks him if he's planning to send those photos to Wright, that newspaperman in Chicago. They move in and out, sleep on the floor of Brad's cabin and set up tents in the woods around, drift through this part of the country like dust.

After a month or two, there's a lawman.

He's a fuckin' _kid_ , says Ray when he sees his face in the paper; he's got eyes pale as the sun and a downward curl to his mouth, and he's from Boston, he's from New York, he's from some smoke-covered city in the East without no horizon. Some of the gang laugh at him; Brad don't. Ray watches Brad's face, careful, and bumps his shoulder against Brad's.

Ain't nothin', he says. We outrun lawmen before.

Ain't never been lawmen from the East before, says Brad, and he's frowning.

Jus' means they can't shoot for shit, says Ray. There's men pushing past them, through Brad's cabin, in one door and out the other; he feels like he's riding through the eye of a tornado.

Used to be a time he thought he was lonely.

Yeah, says Brad, and he don't smile.

         

There's bones by the road, dusty and pale.

Men pourin' West, out to Oregon, out to California. They say there's gold out there, and it ain't fair, Ray's always said, not to sell glamour when you got a horizon to sell it on.

The sun's burning down like a fuse tied to dynamite. The bones've been bleached whiter than white gets.

There's railroads, and there's smoke. There's cities, creeping West as sure as the sun does. There's something gleaming on that horizon, something just out of reach, something so damn close.

Ride farther. Ride faster. Don't look down; there ain't wild things running with you, there can't be. You ain't no jackrabbit; you're predator, not prey. If you're chasin' something else, that means you ain't running away.

The storm comes, all lightning and screamin' gunpowder thundercracks. It'll wash the bones away. It don't smell like rust. Not at all.

        

So there's newspapers, and there's a gang, and there's a lawman, who once gets close enough for Ray to see his eyes; they're pale as grass in the springtime, and they're a hell of a lot less scared than Ray expected, and a hell of a lot more sad.

Lawman's from Boston, say the papers; lawman's part of a team, and from the look on his face in the grainy photos, Ray don't think he likes 'em. Lawman's a rookie, and lawman's name is Fick, and lawman chases them for months on end.

Down the mountains into the wide and sprawling valleys and goldenbrown hills of California; into the dead Nevada desert, where nothing breaks that endless winding trail but the buzzards and the wavering heat where the sky meets the earth; through the plains of Wyoming, the long and eternal grass, as a thunderstorm beats down upon their backs. Lawman chases them almost into the canyon where Brad's cabin is, and there's the thunder-crack of his gun before they lose him.

Lawman can shoot pretty damn straight.

There's none of the usual gang in Brad's cabin, not now. They'll be back, Brad says with dead-blue eyes; he ain't wrong, but Ray don't reply, just glares at his shoulder 'til he holds still and Ray can put on the iodine.

Later, Ray leaves Brad sleeping off the whiskey he gave him to dull the pain, steps outside to get some water from the well. The sun's setting outside, bleedin' all over that golden horizon. The sky's sparkling with stars. The wind lifts Ray's hair, pulls it into a halo around his head.

 _Shame on this Once Glorious Country_ , says Wright on the yellowing newspaper behind him in the cabin, _for Prosecuting these Men_ , and there's an illustration of a large, wide-grinning pig with dollar signs in its eyes operating a policeman by marionette strings. The pig is helpfully labeled _Railroad Companies_ , in case the reader can't seem to make it out.

A voice behind Ray says, Nice night.

Ray don't turn around, just says, Y'here to arrest us, you ain't takin' us alive.

He all right? says the lawman.

Ray says, He will be.

The sky's the color of a bruise; _periwinkle_ , says the book of fancy-ass poetry Ray's schoolteacher made him read, all those years ago. Venus is burning like a brand.

Why're you here? says Ray.

The lawman's silent, at first. Then he says, Suspected you'd try to recruit me. Tell me I ain't on the right side.

That offer ain't mine to make, says Ray.

No, says the lawman, I s'pose it ain't.

There's a pause. The lawman says, Even if it were yours to offer. Tell him I ain't got a choice. Tell him it's just the way things have to be.

Ray don't reply, and the lawman says, I ain't even supposed to be having this conversation.

That make you feel better? says Ray. Got it all off of your chest, or are you gonna be tossin' and turnin' in your nice comfy bed back east of the Mississippi?

That ain't why I'm here, says the lawman, quiet.

Y'here to turn it 'round on me and mine, then? Ray says. Tell us this can end here and now if we jus' turn ourselves in nice and quiet? That _yours_ to offer, lawman?

If it were mine to offer, says the lawman, y'think he'd say yes?

Ray don't say a word, just watches the stars shudder in the purpling sky. After some time, he hears the lawman's boots, crunching away.

         

Here's a story:

There was once an outlaw, skinny motherfucker with a gleam in his eye and a chip on his shoulder bigger 'n' Texas, faster with a gun than anybody in the whole of the West, except maybe one. There was an outlaw with a hat tipped low over his forehead, with a twitch of a grin in its shadow and silver stars sparklin' on his heels. There was an outlaw who smiled like a rattlesnake and moved like lightning; there was an outlaw who made gold run through his fingers like water, and water run through the desert gleamin' in the sun like gold.

There was an outlaw, tall as a giant and with eyes harder 'n' ice. There was an outlaw who robbed stagecoaches and trains and banks, who spat at lawmen and smiled at ladies like a shark. And they say that when his shadow fell across the gates of the gold rush towns, the land itself washed up nugget after nugget at his feet; they say that when his horse stamped its hoof, there was cracks in the ground of the Utah desert where there weren't no cracks before; they say that he wrestled a cactus cat bigger 'n' a house for a day and a night, and finally tied her down in a cave in the deserts of Death Valley, and she still fights to get free and bite out his throat, and that's why California has earthquakes.

There was an outlaw who, they say, might've been nothing but a legend, something dreamed up to pass the long lonely nights, another mirage wavering in the heat on the horizon. There was an outlaw who weren't nothing but another silhouette riding into the sunset at the end of the story; there was an outlaw who always disappeared into the western sky, and don't _that_ tell you something.

There was an outlaw who lived in newspapers; there was an outlaw who lived in tall tales. There was an outlaw who lived in the spaces just before the sun went down. There was an outlaw who lived in the West.

And the sun came creepin' across the sky, and the railroads came creepin' across the land, and the desert ran on, and ran on, and ran on.

       

The gang disappears. There ain't no more train robberies.

It's a slow thing, one by one; someone's got to get back to the girl he left at the farm, someone's wife at home has another baby on the way, someone's friend started up a new business in San Francisco and wants them to come along and make a mint, someone just plain ain't got the time to be shot at any more. Someone disappears in the middle of the night, and don't leave a note.

In a little cabin at the heart of a canyon, Ray kisses Brad like the world'll end tomorrow, makes it vicious and angry and hard, so that Brad'll flip him over and hold him down and tell him Stay. He struggles so that Brad'll bite a warning at his neck; he rocks his hips and lets a stream of filth come pouring out of his mouth so that Brad's eyes'll light up, so he'll smile that sunrise smile he only ever gives Ray.

When Brad's asleep, an arm curled loosely around Ray's waist and his body pressed warm against Ray's side, Ray lets himself close his eyes. The wind's wailin' at the sides of the cabin, cold and quick as a snowmelt stream; somewhere on the other side of the world, the sun's rolling towards the horizon.

It's the next day, as they're riding towards Nevada with the morning sun at their backs and their shadows spread out across the desert in front of them, that the lawman comes after them.

This time it ain't a chase that'll end in somebody hiding out and somebody else wandering away to pick up the game again tomorrow, Ray knows. This time it ain't a chase that's going to end at all, because this time the lawman ain't letting them go.

He looks at Brad; Brad looks back. His eyes are hard and proud, and he says to Ray, What the hell you waitin' for?

All right, says Ray, fine, asshole, I'll race you to Hell.

You ain't gonna win, says Brad, and digs his spurs into his horse's heels.

      

The newspapers are hollow, Brad's always said, smell like dust and iron, move too fast and lie too smooth to be worth anything the next day. Ain't nothing real behind them, nothing solid, nothing you can touch or steal or kill. Just words, quicksilver and gleaming; just stories, is all they are.

Ray don't say nothin' in reply.

Or if he does, it's something like this:

Any good outlaw was probably born in a lightning storm.

Sometimes the Devil chases you from here to Texas, and sometimes he rides at your side. Sometimes you fight him; sometimes you kiss him. Sometimes you sit at the foot of his bed while he sleeps, and clean your gun, and wait for him to open his eyes.

Sometimes your face is plastered on the side of every building in the West, and you don't know whether that makes you a wanted man or a hero or both at the same time, and when you're racing the sun to the horizon, you ain't sure if you can tell the difference any more. Sometimes you think all it makes you is doomed.

They race the railroads across the country; they weren't never going to be able to run faster. Don't mean they can't _win._

      

Lawman catches them in an abandoned Nevada town where they once mined silver; the settlers have all left, now, gone chasing the sun to California. Seems there's more and more ghosts runnin' around these parts lately.

My arm hurts, says Brad to Ray as they're crouching behind a rickety old pile of wood that was once a house. Even now, the scrub brush is weighing down on the walls. When Ray looks at him, he shakes his head. Bullet the lawman gave me, he says. Weren't too good for my shoulder.

Can you shoot? says Ray.

I can shoot a hole in your skinny ass, says Brad, but when Ray skims his fingers over the place in his shoulder where the lawman shot it all those days ago, his nostrils flare and his eyes go bright with pain.

All right, says Ray, gimme your gun.

I ain't—says Brad, his face dangerously dark, but Ray waves him off.

Don't get your panties in a twist, Iceman, he says, I ain't gonna do nothin' to you. Gimme your gun.

Brad has to twist over himself all awkward-like to pull his gun out of its holster with his good arm; he puts it in Ray's hand, and it feels cold as bleached-white bone.

Right, says Ray, and slides Brad's gun back into Brad's hand, tears a long strip off of his own shirt, and goes about tying it into Brad's grip until there's nothing that'll shake it out but Armageddon itself.

I'll be damned if I'll go out ridin' with a partner who ain't got a gun in his hand, he says, and he keeps the wobble out of his voice pretty damn well, if he does say so himself.

I'll be damned if I'll die next to a shit-for-brains hick who can't even keep his shirt on, says Brad, staring at him. There's something far too soft in his eyes.

Who said anything about dyin'? says Ray, stands up. C'mon. We got a date.

The first time he peeks his face out around the side of the shack, a bullet lodges itself in the scrub brush by his ear. He jerks back, yells, All right, damn you, all right, jus' let us climb on the damn horse. We ain't running away.

There ain't no bullets whizzing past their faces as Ray helps Brad hoist himself onto the horse, and there ain't no bullets as he climbs on behind Brad, wraps his arms around Brad's waist, turns the horse to face the lawman. The afternoon sun is framing Fick's silhouette; Ray can't see his eyes.

Here's the thing, says Ray, all quiet-like in Brad's ear. Newspapers and tall tales is just stories, right?

Ray, says Brad, we ain't gettin' out of this. What the hell's your game?

Ray slides his hand into Brad's hair, kisses him hot and hungry. Brad tastes like gunpowder and dust, like ozone and lightning, like a desert storm, and Ray'll be damned if he ain't in love.

C'mon, Iceman, I thought you were smart, he says. You think there's anything _just_ about stories?

There's stars on his heels. He digs his spurs into the horse.

      

Ray Person came out of his mama with the Devil chasin' him, and, a few years later, he let the Devil catch up. And they rode across the country in a storm of lies and newsprint; and they left this world with guns in their hands.

There's those that'll say they never died.

Wishful thinking, say some; God's truth, say others. And there's those that'll swear they've seen the two of them drinkin' at saloons in Utah, ridin' down rivers in California. There's those that'll say that, in the middle of the last lightning storm, they heard them laughin', clear as day.

There's newspapers flying across the country, just ahead of the railroads; there's newspapers telling as many lies as they can fit into a paragraph without a lawsuit chasing them down. There's lies and there's lies, though, and there's newsprint that loves legends so badly they're close enough to truth for it not to make a difference.

And there's a journalist in Chicago who puts his pen down, pushes up the window in his office to stare at the smoke drifting across the sky of his city.

The sun's setting in a glory of red and orange. Somewhere he's never travelled, far beyond the horizon, someone's chasing it.

He wrote up their deaths years ago; there's no reason he should be thinking of them now. He never even met them, never shook their hands, and these days there's other things to write, other legends to make. He can't be writing about them again now. He's got work to do.

The sun's almost gone; the stars are pale in the sky.

He doesn't close the window.


End file.
